Things

Things

The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow, reptilian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound-
a small stone falling on a red leaf.

The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing.

The mouse pulls batting
from a hundred-year-old quilt.
She chewed a hole in a blue star
to get it, and now she thrives...
Now is her time to thrive.

Things: simple lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron's
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.

-Jane Kenyon
from Otherwise, New and Selected Poems